The end of government as we know it

The endgame of a returned Morrison Government

Twitter and other social media are filling up with accounts of people in Northern NSW not receiving any sort of government assistance or response to the floods that have devastated the area.

We need to recognise what is happening.

The Morrison and Perrettot Governments, in particular, are driven by an understanding of government that puts little value on the idea of a government safety net; in fact, they are openly hostile to the idea.

Covid, bushfires, and now the floods have provided them—Morrison in particular—with the opportunity to rewrite our understanding of the role of government and the evidence suggests he is using these crises to lower our expectations of government as site of collective response.

I have been making this point for a while now: Morrison skipping off to Hawaii during the bushfires; his failure to order vaccines for Covid in a timely manner; his failure to distribute funds in the wake of the bushfires; his indifference to the provision of RATs as Omicron ran rampa…